LIV Golf has undoubtedly shaken up the sports world over the past few weeks. With that said, is it possible that a football league will be the next Saudi-funded endeavor?
While there’s no indication that’ll happen, Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk recently discussed this hypothetical situation.
Here’s what Florio had to say, via ProFootballTalk:
On one hand, it’s a lot easier to set up a series of golf events to compete with the PGA. Golfers are one-man teams. It’s a sport driven largely by TV, and it doesn’t take much infrastructure to drop players onto a course with cameras covering the action and a few broadcasters talking into microphones.
On the other hand, the nation has an overwhelming appetite for football, especially during football season. While the NFL, thanks iconic franchises throughout the nation and a massive fan base that follows the sport intensely and passionately, has the money and the power to beat back challengers (no one has even tried since the original USFL in the 1980s), the ongoing growth of legalized gambling will create an appetite for things on which to wager.
A rival league would certainly shake things up for the NFL.
The NFL has been the top professional sports league in America for years. If there’s even a chance that a rival league could hurt its stock, that could cause some serious tension.
“This is how you start a World War in the 21st century,” one fan tweeted.
“If LIV starts a football league, the NFL is in trouble cause NFL players are definitely taking those crazy bags,” another fan wrote.
Of course, there are several fans who aren’t worried about a rival league posing a challenge to the NFL.
The funds are there for a Saudi-backed football league, that’s for sure. Whether or not it would actually work is a different story.
For now, the NFL remains king.